Charles Krauthammer on Obama: ‘More a Hugo Chavez Than He is a Teddy Roosevelt’

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President Barack Obama intended to capture the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt with what was previewed as a “class warfare” speech earlier this week, but Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer thinks he fell short of that. Instead, he said Obama’s particular brand of populism channeled “not Teddy Roosevelt so much as [Venezuelan President] Hugo Chavez.”

In his column Thursday, Krauthammer said when Obama spoke about the millions who “are now forced to take their children to food banks,” he said so implying he himself bears no responsibility for the current economic climate.

“It’s the rich” Obama blames, Krauthammer wrote. “And, like Horatius at the bridge, Obama stands with the American masses against the soulless plutocrats. This is populism so crude that it channels not Teddy Roosevelt so much as Hugo Chavez.

Speaking Friday on “Inside Washington,” Krauthammer discussed the point further:

“He talked about how we got here. He gave a nice historical rundown except that he left out a critical three years – his presidency. It’s as if it didn’t exist. It’s as if we jumped from ’08 to today….This is a classic example of how little it takes to stir the erogenous zones of liberals. You give them a speech with social justice, a little bit of class war, you wrap it up in the patina of intellectualism in what is essentially a speech that exonerates anything he’s done and obviously not done and says all of our problems today are the result of the plutocrats.”